Review: When politics becomes a brand
(iStock)Lauren Duca is a columnist for Teen Vogue and the author of the viral op-ed “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,” as well as (of late) an instructor at New York University who is under scrutiny for having “more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.” She is also on a mission to document the democratic outpouring of youth following the 2016 election.
In How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, Duca counters the claim that Gen Z and millennial cohorts are detached from the political process with examples of people moved, primarily by the ascendency of Trump, to advocate for change. Interviews with young activists, from the Parkland gun-control advocates David and Lauren Hogg to Kat Calvin, founder of Spread the Vote, appear between critiques of the “political-industrial complex,” “gatekeepers” and the poor state of civic education.
This “informal alliance of industries that conspire to maintain or increase power” alienates voters by replacing substantive conversation with artificial competition intent on preserving a two-party status quo. Duca mirrors previous work on the detachment of political debate from reality, notably E. J. Dionne Jr.’s Why Americans Hate Politics. Where Dionne claims that political engagement buckles under a series of false choices framed by liberal and conservative ideologies, Duca paints this complex in market terms, looking at voters as “customers” asked to swallow an increasingly unappealing product. Those left out of the conversation are young folks, often women, seen as too preoccupied with “nonserious interests”—like nail art—to merit a place at the adult table of political debate.
How to Start a Revolution suffers from some myopia, viewing legitimate forms of activism as those that conform to the aesthetic preferences of the like-mindedly “woke.“
How to Start a Revolution suffers from some myopia, however, viewing legitimate forms of activism as those that conform to the aesthetic preferences of the like-mindedly “woke.” These aesthetics were on display at the 2018 Teen Vogue Summit, which “is designed to look, more or less, like Urban Outfitters.” This, we are told, is something politicians ought to emulate “to get young people interested in politics.” A performative progressivism is evident in these pages, blind to the fact that not all 28-year-olds live in Brooklyn, espouse love for A.O.C. and enjoy reading The New Yorker. In fact, some of them might have voted for Trump.
While Duca reports in detail difficult discussions with her Trump-supporting parents, there is scant evidence of further engagement with different political persuasions. A simplistic image of the #resistance and its opposition obscures the call for honest dialogue in the book’s final pages, and the author’s emphasis on personal branding and political style over substance leaves this young reader questioning whether Duca’s revolutionary vision will, or even should, succeed.
This article also appeared in print, under the headline “Politics as brand,” in the February 17, 2020, issue.
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